


In The End, There Was Acceptance

by Lady_Darkness



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, Hurt without actual comfort, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 08:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18339578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Darkness/pseuds/Lady_Darkness
Summary: Steve tries to come to terms with the events at the end of Infinity War.





	In The End, There Was Acceptance

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I wrote this in one day, to conquer the writer’s block that’s plagued me for months. Any mistake is mine. 
> 
> Depression is written from Natasha’s POV as I couldn’t bring myself to write it from Steve’s. Maybe one day I can do it.

 

Denial

 

“No,” Steve whispered as he frantically tried to collect the ashes of his best friend, his buddy, his Bucky.

This hadn’t just happened, this couldn’t have happened. His breath was knocked out of him and the longer he tried, the less he felt like he was actually doing something to help anyone.

He had seen it happen, he had felt the universe move, then the snap and Bucky calling for him, whispering his name in fear and confusion. Before he’d been able to react, Bucky had turned to ashes where he stood, only leaving his gun. Even the new vibranium arm disappeared as the last traces of his body fluttered to the ground to find their last resting place on Wakandan soil, where he had spent the last two years being healed from the torture HYDRA had subjected him to since that fall of the train.

Steve kept looking at the ashes, neither seeing nor understanding that this was all that was left of the most important relationship he’d had since he was brought back from the bottom of the ocean. His friend, his beloved, the one love he had never dared speak its name in fear of losing it. His throat closed up and he could barely suppress a scream, louder than anything he’d ever heard.

Shaking his head violently, he stood up. This hadn’t happened, not at all. Bucky was somewhere else, he had to be… he couldn’t have disappeared. The alternative being too depressing for Steve to even consider, he got up from the ground and started walking, completely ignoring the desperate cries he heard everywhere. He shook off Natasha’s concerned looks and Banner’s hand on his shoulder.

The desperate cries and the sound of tears being shed were everywhere. There was no way to escape, but Steve didn’t hear them. He just kept moving in a straight line.

“Dad? Dad?”

“Where did she go? Just a minute ago, she was here… and where’s the horse?”

“Erik, noooooooo…. Please come back, I didn’t mean it!”

“Anyone knows what happened to Tony?”

“Why hasn’t Stark returned?”

“What happened?”

 

“Help me,” it was a young voice, whimpering and in pain, crying for help, that pulled Steve out of his apathy.

He snapped out of his own mind and listened to where the sound came from. When he located it, he started running, followed by both Bruce and Natasha. They passed several families, mourning their losses, but neither stopped. Even if he could save one more life, it would be worth it.

Under the bodies of the fallen, a young man lay crying. Steve remembered him from the capital. He’d been one of the boys desperate to fight for Wakanda and to save humanity. He’d reminded Steve of himself as a young man, scrawny and barely able to take care of himself, but determined to make a difference. The boy had held a weapon that was way too big for his tiny frame, but his eyes had shown the courage he possessed.

Steve noticed the boy pushed against the weight of the dead crushing him, but the fight was starting to leave his eyes. He seemed to have resigned himself to lying there, waiting for death to bring its sweet release.

Steve ran to his side and pulled off the bodies in one fluid movement, allowing the boy to breathe again. As Steve watched him suck in air, he knew the kid was going to be okay. He stood up, slapping the boy on the back to make sure his airways weren’t blocked.

“Thank you, Captain,” the kid whispered

“You saved many lives today, including my own. Wakanda will never forget your sacrifice.”

Steve just nodded and went on his way, back to looking for survivors. 

 

Anger 

 

Steve had always carried the right amount of anger within him, to compensate for his huge heart and to allow him to find the courage to stand up to bullies and bad guys even when he was just a ninety pounds young man back in Brooklyn.

It came as no surprise to him when he suddenly found himself unable to stop trembling three days after the snap, as Banner and Natasha had dubbed Thanos’ action that left half of the world population standing and the other one god knows where.

Everyone else still seemed to be in shock, but Steve could feel that familiar burn right under his skin, the one that always preceded one of his ‘stupid attempts at being a savior’ and usually resulted in Bucky having to come and save his own ass from the bullies he’d tried to stop.

He was in the middle of a meeting with Banner and some of the Wakandan scientists when he felt it was going to happen. Politely excusing himself, he went outside and sprinted away, deep into the woods where he knew Bruce had been hiding out as well. When he reached a clearing, he allowed the scream to build, first making sure he was out of the way so no one would hear. He opened his mouth and let go. At first it was nothing but a raw and desperate sound. Unable to form words, Steve just breathed in and let his voice fill the silence surrounding him again, and again, until his voice gave out.

A strange sense of calm came over him as he let out the last of his breath. His lungs deflated and his throat hurt, but his mind seemed much clearer than it had been when he’d run off and announced he needed some time alone. 

 

Bargaining 

 

Sometimes, Steve had nightmares. He’d always had them since freeing Bucky and almost losing him again in Azzano, but they had never been as bad as when he had just found his friend again.

In his dreams, he saw the young man he had known being tortured by vicious HYDRA doctors in every possible way. Whenever dream Bucky screamed in pain under their ministrations, Steve woke up from his own, echoing scream. He always fell back asleep, but not without reassuring himself that Bucky was back, and safely under King T’Challa’s and Shuri’s care.

It was one of those nights when Steve got out of Bucky’s bed, in his hut where he’d stayed ever since he woke up from cryo up until that last day, when the fight against Thanos and his army had gone down. How Steve had ended up in this hut was a big mystery, one he didn’t care to examine too closely for he might not like what he’d find out about himself.

Bucky was still very much present in the small place. Steve made sure he left everything undisturbed, so it would be easier to sense his friend’s presence.

He walked outside, casting an eye on heaven. Sitting down on the ground, he sighed, almost in defeat, and started doing something he hadn’t done since 1944. He prayed. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…,” as the words flowed, Steve felt anger boil up inside of him. A small ball of fire, growing hotter and bigger the longer he sat there. No one was going to come save them, as had been proven time and time again. He’d have to do it all by himself, be Captain America again. Now, if only he had a shield... .

He lost whatever courage he’d gathered as fast as it had come on and sank back to his knees, folding his hands in prayer again. “Please, God, just take me and let Bucky come back,” he almost sobbed, then buried his head in his hands. He was ready to take on Thanos once more, but not to fight him this time. He wanted to go up to the Titan and propose a deal, either give Bucky back, or just take him too. Was there even a reason for him to be here anymore? 

 

Depression 

 

A month after the snap, Natasha came by the hut. She’d respected his request to be left alone that day he’d run off into the woods and had come back later, with a grim look in his eyes and tear tracks staining his face. She’d known he wasn’t ready to come back then.

What was left of the Avengers worked together with the Wakandan royal family and Shuri’s team to find out more about Thanos and his race. SHIELD had sent their best scientists to help as well, but to no avail. They had learned a lot about the Titans, but no one had found anything yet on how to destroy the stones without risking the victims to be lost forever.

Natasha had been worried about Steve’s reaction to the loss of Bucky, but she had never pushed him to talk about it. Partly because she herself knew what pain felt like, and she also realized talking about things never solved what had gone wrong in the first place. She believed in action, fighting the evil in the world, whether it was HYDRA or Thanos, she believed the Avengers could win in the end. Without the Sokovia Accords to hold them back, there was no reason they could not go after Thanos and his army to try and undo the damage they had wrought.

This was why Natasha found herself at Bucky’s hut that particular afternoon, knowing Steve would be there.

As Steve opened the door, Natasha took a good look at him. His hair had grown even longer, his beard unkempt and pointing in all directions. His eyes had a haunted quality to them, as if he wasn’t really seeing what was in front of him, but rather some nightmarish scene concocted by his mind. Natasha couldn’t blame him, they’d all seen too much in their lifetime, but her practical side won as she walked in and slammed the door behind her.

The little living room was immaculate, but the open door to the bedroom showed the mess Steve had left there. Natasha stomped past Steve and marched straight into the bedroom. The smell was unbearable, the sheets hadn’t been washed or changed for at least a month, probably longer. There were food wrappings and fruit peels all over the floor, covering the carpet Shuri had given Bucky once he’d settled down in this place.

One look at Steve was all that was needed to make the super soldier crumble down and cry. He slid down the wall, barely holding up his weight with his legs. Natasha sprinted and caught him before he went down. She gently wrapped him up in her arms and soothed him, hushing soft words in Russian.

She kept holding him for what seemed in infinite amount of time, until his sobs calmed down and she only felt the slow trickle of tears against her shoulder. 

 

Acceptance 

 

The sunrise blinded Steve for a moment as he exited Bucky’s hut he’d lived in for over six months now. He blinked and took in the colors of the Wakandan landscape under the early light. Was this the first thing Bucky had seen every morning during the time he’d spent here? Had he looked upon it with the same sense of wonder Steve did?

The hut didn’t hold too many clues as to how Bucky liked to live his life. A few books were scattered around the place, mostly detective stories he remembered Bucky already enjoyed when they were kids back in the 30s. He wondered how they’d gotten here, but when he remembered King T’Challa, Steve could imagine how the books had made their way down to Wakanda.

The furniture was mostly Wakandan and very utilitarian, and obviously inspired by what he remembered from the Barnes’ apartment in Brooklyn. There was a small table, two wooden chairs and a large couch, covered in a deep purple blanket embroidered in something that looked distinctly local to Steve, but he didn’t know. He probably should’ve asked the villagers instead of avoiding contact.

Steve loved to imagine Bucky falling asleep on that couch, maybe reading one of the novels, or just lying back, relishing in being his own person again.

Most of the times he saw Bucky in his mind’s eye, he remembered him from when they were young, with a smile on his face that easily reached his eyes, and a flop of hair often covering on of them. Those daydreams had helped him cope, for a while, until he one day got up and found he just couldn’t anymore. Bucky’s image retreated back into Steve’s mind and blurred a little more each day.

He hadn’t bothered to come out of hiding too many times, just surfacing long enough to attend important meetings with the royal family and the scientists, only to be told no remedy had been found. He usually scurried back to Bucky’s hut after such news, too lethargic to care. On one or two occasions, he’d even lost his composure in the meeting hall, allowing tears to leak from his eyes. On one of those occasions he’d found himself wrapped up in one of Thor’s bear hugs. The touch of someone stronger than him, as well as someone who had experienced the same loss he had had left him feeling a little better that day. But as soon as the Asgardian had left to continue his own search, Steve had felt alone again and retreated inside of himself.

This day, which marked exactly six months after the snap, was the first time Steve felt like he wanted to go out, to contribute to the search for a solution, to a means to fight Thanos and restore the universe as it once had been before the Titan had gotten hold of the Infinity Stones.

He grabbed a fresh pair of pants and a shirt and headed out to the small pond he knew was hidden near the outskirts of the village. The children had told him about it, and how the White Wolf always preferred to bathe there instead of using the more modern facilities closer to the capital.

This was the day he wanted to see it for himself, to get acquainted with another part of Bucky, the man who had held his heart ever since that fateful day somewhere back in the 1930s. Maybe he could just make it through after all. He would be fine on his own.

It was only a short walk to the pond, barely ten minutes and he hadn’t even worked up a sweat. When he arrived there, he was immediately aware of the same beauty Bucky must have noticed.

The pond was surrounded by short stemmed trees, covered in deep green foliage. A few brightly colored flowers were scattered between the grass and the few rocks stuck next to the water.

Steve slung his tunic over the rocks and entered the water, clad in only a pair of grey boxers. The water was cool and refreshing, a balm to his overheated and burning skin. He took a few steps to the middle of the pond and sunk to his knees, letting the water cover most of his chest all the way up to his shoulders. He threw his head back and slowly lowered his head in the water. Silence was the first thing he noticed, no voices inside his head telling him he wasn’t strong enough, no inner reprimands for not being able to save Bucky and the other victims. He enjoyed being free like this, and when he surfaced, a small smile had formed on his lips.

This was a good day, the first one in six months, and he was going to make it count. In a swift movement he was on his feet and threw himself headfirst into the water again, playing like the kid he hadn’t been since before World War II.

“Captain!! Captain!”, a small but shrill voice reached him through the water.

Steve got up, pushing his hair back from his forehead and looked at the Wakandan kid coming up to the pond. He knew him, he was the little brother of the boy he’d saved so many months ago, and they had both been closely involved with the search and rescue attempts.

He waved at the boy.

“How may I help you, son?” he asked politely.

The boy’s eyes were glittering with excitement as he ran closer to the edge of the water.

“Mr. Stark has come, with a bald blue lady. And Thor is back too, and a scary looking man all in green!! They want everyone to come to the big meeting room at the palace. They have found them, all of them!” the kid screeched.

Steve felt his heart sink. This was too good to be true, but he didn’t want to squash the first spark of real hope he’d felt in all those months, so he stood up and waved at the boy.

“I’ll be there in a minute, just give me a moment to change.”

He sank under water once more, rubbing over his torso and legs, and wiping the leaves off his hair. Moving slowly, he made his way to the edge and used a rock to hoist himself out of the water. When he came face to face with the young boy’s eyes, the barely contained enthusiasm in them, he couldn’t help but smile. Maybe he had been right this morning, he thought, and today was going to be a good day.


End file.
